At long last: EPA releases pesticide use statistics

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked for figures on pesticide use — it must happen at least once a week. "How many pounds of pesticides are used in the U.S. each year?" "Is pesticide use going up or down?" "What's the most commonly used insecticide in the U.S.?" and so on. The best I could do was point to 10-year old numbers.

But last Friday, EPA finally released updated sales and usage numbers. The agency used to produce a report summarizing national pesticide use every two years, but not long after Bush took office they stopped coming out. Now that report is back, though it only has figures through 2007.

And what does it say? Here are some highlights:

Pesticide use in agriculture is down slightly, from 948 million pounds in 2000 to 877 million pounds in 2007. But that's only about 1% per year, and still close to a billion pounds of toxic chemicals intentionally introduced into the environment and our food supply each year.

The herbicide glyphosate has more than doubled in use, from 85-90 million pounds in 2001 to 180-185 million pounds in 2007. According to a report from the Organic Center, this increase is likely a reflection of the rising popularity of Monsanto's RoundUp Ready genetically modified crops. (Glyphosate is the active ingredient of RoundUp.)

So kudos to EPA for resurrecting this series of reports. Now I can spend less time explaining this particular data gap to perfectly reasonable people and reporters, and more time working on actual use reductions.

1

Toxed2loss wrote:

I too was pleased to see this report by the EPA. I agree not enough has been done. Thought I'd share this,

"Pesticide-related illnesses among farm workers in U.S.A. each year: Approximately 300,000. Number of people in the U.S. who die each year from cancer related to pesticides: 10,400. Number of people in the U.S. killed each year by assault rifles: 250."

2

ckharris wrote:

hi karl,
thanks for posting this . . .
the interpretation of aggregate data is always difficult . . .
but it seems to me that when looking at temporal changes in pesticide use, one has to take account of differences in the production from that pesticide use . . .
one way to to do would be to look at change in pesticide use and change in acreage harvested . . . but this is problematic because over the past two or three decades the spatial density of planting has increased . . .
so perhaps a way to attempt a comparison would be to look at change in total volume of harvest . . .
cheers,
craig harris